Whether you are a marketing professional or a business decision maker, one thing is for sure: have you stopped to analyze the changes that both cookieless and the new Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will bring to the market? And I still leave another question in the air: has your company already started to organize itself for all these transformations? The year 2023 is knocking on the door and having your audience data in hand is essential for the future of your business.
Starting with the end of cookies and third-party identifiers, IAB Brazil’s State of Data 2022 – The Measurement Dilemma report shows that the industry still does not understand the impact of this change and, consequently, is not preparing for it. Another fact pointed out by the report is that 60% of brands say they are prepared, but the increase in investment in third-party date continues to grow year after year.
And as much as leaders still say they shouldn’t be affected by this change, roughly half (49%) are seeing higher CPMs on iOS and 30% on Android, following the release of Apple’s iOS 14.5. Apple’s novelty has led to restrictions that have reduced the volume of addressable audiences and available inventory, driving up total costs. One can take it as a good example of what might happen.
And the impact is already being felt. Also according to IAB Brasil’s research, the increase in ad values, caused by major disruptions in relation to privacy issues in the digital market, will reduce the set of addressable audiences available, thus increasing the costs to maintain ROAS/CAC/CPMs of the campaign – a percentage that grows from 29% to about 200%.¹
Only those who do not understand how important media segmentation is in the planning and outcome of a campaign will not feel the effect. And how to prepare for the end of cookieless? Here are five strategies that can be helpful:
- Have an organized primary data management with the most unified view possible of the consumer;
- Have a plan for the use of primary data;
- If you already have audience management platforms or use data-driven media partners, check with partners if they are preparing for this change;
- Reserve investment to explore solutions more privacy-centric and less dependent on cookies and third-party identifiers;
- Consolidate the data in one place (Data Clean Rooms, Data Lakes, among others) in order to perform a complete assessment and identify any gaps in the collected data.
In addition to cookieless, another point that your business needs to be aware of is with regard to the change from the current Google Analytics to GA4. If your business already uses the tool, the time to prepare for migration is now.
With the new version, the way the data are measured will be differentiated. The goal is to get a better view of the consumer journey within all proprietary channels, providing a more audience-oriented view, building it in a more appropriate way and, consequently, bringing greater intelligence to the business.
The big point is that the turn of the current GA to the new version will happen in July 2023. The new version will change the indicators used by companies, since the accounting, measurements and metrics are done differently as I mentioned above and, for this, requires a certain time to monitor and understand what will come of news.
What I suggest is that your company do the implementation later this year. It is very important to run the two versions together to understand the changes well, as well as build greater history. It is necessary to have an expert eye for this implementation that, whether you like it or not, will have an impact on the digital business. It’s not simply a tag change as was done in previous Google Analytics changes. Now, it is essential to think about building an audience, analyzing the business and implementing GA4 that brings answers.
By having your own audience and structured, you will have a valuable asset at hand, after all, data is assets. Think about it, it’s only seven months before 2023 arrives.
Sources: Common Thread Collective, 1/10/22; eMarketer, 11/5/21; MOLOCO – State of Data 2022 – O Dilema da Mensuração do IAB Brasil.
